Jerry Oltion - The Getaway Special

Allen handed the canister to Judy, positioning her like a piece of lab equipment until she held it at the right angle, then he pulled a screwdriver out of the tool kit, reached into the canister’s open end with it, and looked sideways at Gerry.

“I’ve just taken over the ship,” he said. “Now float that gun over here, very gently.”

Gerry didn’t look amused. “What are you talking about? Get busy and fix that before I—”

“Before you what? I give you ten seconds to surrender or I take this screwdriver and stir. Shoot me before I make the repairs and you get the same result. Maybe they’ll name the crater after you.”

Gerry shifted the gun to point at Judy. She felt her breath catch, but Allen shifted his head to be the target again. “Won’t work. You can’t risk hitting me and you know it. Float the gun over. Five seconds.” Allen slowly threaded the screwdriver in between the wires until his hand was inside the canister, saying all the while, “Four seconds, three seconds, two seconds, one—very good, Gerry. Judy, catch that.”

She let go of the canister and fielded the gun, sandwiching it between her gloved hands, but she couldn’t get her finger in the trigger guard. Her heart pounding, she said, “Allen…”

He saw the problem. “Trade me,” he said, letting go of the canister and taking the gun from her. “Get in the bottom bunk, Gerry.”

Wordlessly, Gerry drifted over and slid into the bunk. Allen closed the panel after him, then hunted in the tool kit until he found a coil of what looked like bell wire and used that to tie the panel shut. Then he gave the gun back to Judy and began looking inside the canister again, poking and prodding around.

“What are you doing?” Judy asked.

“Looking for the problem.”

“I thought you said you’d found it.”

“I lied. I didn’t figure there was much point in looking until we had Gerry safely out of the way.”

“But what if—never mind. Just hurry. We don’t have much time.”

“It won’t take long. If it isn’t something simple I won’t be able to fix it anyway. I don’t have any test equipment. All I brought along were spare parts.”

Judy propped herself against the lockers, her back against the wall and her feet out at an angle against the floor. She’d discovered the position on her first flight. It almost felt like gravity, at least to the legs, and it had the added advantage of holding her in place. She said, “I can’t believe you. Do you have the slightest idea what this means to the human race?”

“I think I do, yes.”

“Then why are you risking it like this? You should have made it public the moment you realized what you had. Good god, if the secret dies with us now, we—”

“It won’t. I arranged an internet mailing to every member of INSANE, triggered by the first pulse from the timing beacon. The plans should be arriving in people’s email all over the world just about now.” Allen raised his voice so Gerry could hear him, too. “There are thirty-seven Russians in INSANE, Gerry. They each got the email, too. So you see, none of this really would have made much difference in the long run anyway. This was just a public demonstration so they wouldn’t waste time trying to decide if it would really work. I’ve asked everyone to put the plans on their web sites, too, so anybody can download them. I don’t think any elite group should have a monopoly on space travel, not even INSANE.” He paused, squinted inside the canister, and said, “I think I’ve found it. All those jumps in a row overheated a voltage regulator.”

He opened his personal locker and got out a baggie full of electronics parts. He fished around until he found the one he needed, a half-inch square with three legs, and replaced the one in the canister with it. He put the lid back on and held it out. “Okay, you can put it back now.”

Judy took the canister and pushed herself toward the airlock. Before she closed the door, she said, “Why don’t I stay out there while you try it? It’ll save time if we have to bring it in again.”

“Good idea.”

She closed the airlock door and began depressurizing it. It seemed to take forever to bleed the air out, but she knew that it only took three minutes. She could hear her own breathing inside her helmet, just the way she’d imagined she would when she was a little girl dreaming about space. The suit stiffened a little as the outside pressure dropped. When the gauge reached zero she opened the outer hatch and stepped out into the cargo bay.

The Moon was a flat gray wall of craters in front of her. She watched it for a moment, thinking, This is what it looked like to the Apollo crews. And I thought I’d never get to see it .

What sorts of other things would she be seeing that she had only dreamed of before? The other planets, almost certainly. Other stars? Why not? She knew she was going to be in trouble when she got back, but Allen’s invention practically assured her that the trouble wouldn’t last Space-trained pilots were going to be in very short supply before long. NASA couldn’t afford to ground her now, but even if they did she knew she could get a job flying somebody else’s ship. Or even her own, for that matter. Anything that would hold air would work. She wasn’t above flying a pressurized septic tank, if that’s what it took to stay in space.

Judy heard a nervous voice over the intercom. “Having problems out there?”

She shook herself back to the present. The Moon was drawing closer by the second. “No. Hang on.” She fastened the getaway special canister back to the cargo bay wall and plugged in the data link to the ship. “How’s that?”

“I’m getting power. Let me run the diagnostic check.” A few seconds later, Allen said, “Looks good. I’m keying in the coordinates.”

“You sure you don’t want to stay and admire the view?”

“Uh… some other time, maybe.”

“Right.” Judy reached out to steady herself against the airlock door. She tilted her head back for one last look at the Moon, so near she almost felt she could touch it. Someday she would. Someday soon. She cleared her throat. “Whenever you’re—”

But it had already disappeared.

“Your hyperdrive engine,” Carl said, “is the worst disaster to befall the world since the invention of the nuclear bomb.” He’d finally awakened from the drugs Gerry had given him, and was hovering over Allen’s shoulders in the aft crew station, glancing nervously out the overhead windows from time to time, as if the Earth might slip by without his knowledge unless he were diligent in watching for it.

He was a nervous man anyway, thin and hatchet-faced. At least he looked that way on the ground. In orbit, the normal pooling of fluids in the upper body that came with zero-gee rounded out his features, making him look almost normal. Judy, watching him from the command chair where she’d been trying to assess the damage to the ship, wondered if that was why he liked spaceflight so much: because it improved his appearance.

Allen stood at his control panel, his feet tucked into floor grips so he wouldn’t have to hold himself down every time he pushed a button. He’d been there for nearly an hour, running diagnostics on the hyperdrive engine and using the shuttle’s navigation equipment to figure out where they were before he moved them anywhere else.

It was taking much longer than he’d expected, partially because of Carl’s interference. At this latest proclamation, Allen tilted his head back, looked at Carl upside down, and said, “You know, it amazes me how a Luddite could work his way so high in the space program. If you really think a major breakthrough in spaceflight is a disaster, why aren’t you back in Florida blowing up the Vehicle Assembly Building or something?”